A Sacred Patch of Carpet

By Gary Thomas (MCS '88)

Gary Thomas is a graduate of Regent College, an adjunct faculty member at Western Seminary, and Writer in Residence at Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Since graduating from Regent in 1988, Gary has written 18 books that have collectively sold over a million copies and have been translated into fifteen languages.

“Oh, no!”

I was a mile from downtown Houston,
crossing a bridge that spanned a busy road, on my first run from our new home
in a section of Houston called the “Heights” (because it’s 38 feet above
downtown!), when it hit me: breathing deeply on a run here is like trying to
meditate in an arcade.

The air was awful.

But we already owned the house, so in one
sense, this was my new trail…

While running in Bellingham, Washington, where
I had lived much of my adult life, breathing on a run was like smelling pine
trees that were literally nourished by the Bay’s waters. Every gulp was a gift
from God. In Houston, the air tastes like every breath has traveled through
concrete and industrial particulate matter before it assaults your lungs,
laughing on its way in. It’s grudging, spiteful, and my heart doctor
practically suggested I’d do better, health wise, eating a doughnut inside than
going for a run outside.

I knew accepting a teaching position (as
writer-in-residence) at Second Baptist Church would change my running
experience, and six years in, “change” is much too soft of a word. But the
commitment to live out our calling sometimes means avocations must give way to
our calling.

My wife is a saint for following. Houston
is renowned in the United States for being the only major city without a single
zoning law. Schools, strip malls, houses, and businesses can be built over,
around, on top of, or behind each other. If you own the land, you can do just
about whatever you want with it.

It’s the Texas way.

My wife left a city perfumed with pine, waking
up to mornings of picturesque fog, mountains in the distance framing sunrise
and sunset, a favorite walk through the woods to a grocery store that catered
toward organic food lovers, and some waterfalls just a few miles away, to drive
through legions of concrete (how is there any concrete left in the world after
Houston built its freeways?), in a city flat enough to, as the saying goes,
“Spend three days watching your dog run away.”

But the people… Oh, how we love the people.
They love God, they know their Bibles, and they are thirsty for solid,
challenging teaching. Last Sunday my sermon got interrupted by applause four
times. That never happened once in
the Pacific Northwest. They might spill their coffee if they’re offended, but
they’re not going to put it down to clap.

I can’t tell you how much I miss my
Saturday runs in Bellingham. I had the perfect eighteen-mile run that crossed
just a few streets. The rest was on forest trails and on one glorious expanse a
walkway that stretched out over the bay.

That is gone; there is no running trail in
Houston that could compare with my tenth
favorite trail in Bellingham. But there’s a new place I love to go to. It has
to be early in the morning or late on certain evenings for the quiet to ascend.
When the time is right, though, I have a key fob that allows me entrance to an
empty sanctuary that seats 5,500 people. I crawl up the steps to the stage, I
kneel right where I’ll be standing to teach that weekend, and I pour out my
heart to God in total isolation.

It is now one of my favorite places on this
planet to be.

There’s something about knowing that in
another day, or a few hours, this place will be full and loud and there will be
cameras on me and three terrifyingly large screens fed by high definition
cameras that pick up the glare of my bald head and every skin blemish (it’s
unfortunate to still be fighting acne while you’re going bald, but God never
asked my permission).

But in those quiet, dark moments, before
the drama begins, I open up my heart to God and pray that he’ll treat me like a
dam—it’s an analogy birthed in the Pacific Northwest, but it works here in
Houston, too: the power of the sermon isn’t dependent on the dam, any more than
hydroelectricity is. What matters is the water flowing through it. If God might concentrate the flow of His
water through this place, from this very spot, thirsty souls could drink deeply
of His grace, some of them for the very first time. Others, so thirsty that
they have begun testing polluted waters, could be brought back from the
brink. If God would let His pure water
flow through this dam, in this place, there might be a line of people here,
standing before me, making life-changing decisions…

The beauty of that patch of carpet—I can’t
believe I even typed those words—rivals Whatcom Falls, Bellingham Bay, and even
Mt. Baker. It’s a place of drama, of warfare, of battle—but a place where I’ve
seen God show up time after time.

I’ve learned that what matters is not so
much the place as the presence of God.
Sure, that sounds like a Christian bookstore cliché poster, but when Christ has
made your heart His home, the location doesn’t matter quite as much as the
company you keep.

The Reformation of Love
One reductive historical explanation of the Reformation is that Martin Luther's role in the events all stemmed from the problem of a guilty conscience. Hear Ron Rittgers address this misconception, demonstrating how a theology of love, not of guilt, was Luther's bedrock.

Hans Boersma on the Tragedy of the Reformation
For Boersma the basic response of all Christians to the Reformation is lament. But that's not to say the tragedy is all to be blamed on the Reformers. Hear Boersma trace the larger movement which led to the church's split in the 16th century.

Informed by All Our Senses
Art in the sanctuary—sculptures of David, paintings of Mary on a donkey—are not new to us. But how might art amplify and deepen Sunday’s sermon? How might it shift our preconceptions to see God in new ways?

Got ideas for a story? A news item or event related to Regent
that you want to promote? Or maybe some feedback on an article we
published?

Unless otherwise noted, all site content and design are copyright @2012-2018 Regent College. No reproduction, electronic or otherwise, without the permission of Regent College. Please refer to our Fine Print for information on our privacy policy and terms of use.